Gail Simone's Blog, page 177

In Writing...

…the question is not whether or not you will mess up.

You WILL mess up.

The question is, how badly and how often.

But what’s important is what you do NEXT.

Do you face that you messed up, or not?

That question says says something about who you are as a writer. But it also says something about who you are as a human being.

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Published on January 31, 2016 08:34

Excuse me. I am working on a piece regarding Wonder Woman characters, and I was hoping to ask you, as one of the writers who has worked with Wonder Woman, a question about one character in particular. What lead to you creating Genocide? Is there a thematic

Well, it’s interesting…most of the iconic superheroes have a character who is their opposite, thematically, in some way. I didn’t really see that for Wonder Woman. She didn’t seem to have a lot of characters who came at her with that approach. I think the closest is probably Ares…Wonder Woman is about peace, love and compassion and protecting those things even if it means sacrificing her safety and serenity, so Ares being the God of War is probably the closest thing to her opposite.

But I have never found Ares to be scary, really. He can be interesting and manipulative, but he’s got that DC gods thing, where he’s a bit removed and aloof, and that takes away some of his impact as a direct foe. He’s best as a guy pushing the chess pieces around.

So I wanted someone who was more directly her match physically, who would come at her in a huge goddamn ball of fury. Genocide was about rage, anger, and cruelty. She’s a war crime in a jump suit. So she’s exactly what Wonder Woman fights against, and between them, there can never be understanding, there can never be compassion. And her approach is SO brutal that even Diana has to stop and confront things inside herself just to be on the battlefield.

Genocide got mixed results…Diana hadn’t had a villain quite like her before, and there’s a whole contingent of WW fans who really don’t want her stories to get that stark. I get it, but it was really felt at the time that she needed someone who would make her sweat. We had been hearing so, so much ‘ultimate DC fighter’ stuff, which is cool, but then she would be sent against some brainy villain or an army of parademons, stuff that was no challenge for her physically. Genocide was meant to make her strain, break her down, give her a wall she couldn’t easily climb.

A lot of previous stories, they had to break Diana down in some artificial way to make her villains seem a greater challenge. I wanted a villain who could fight Diana at her best, at the peak of her abilities. And finally, it occurred to me what an enemy of civilization rage is…we follow people who are angry, without knowing if their anger leads anywhere good. Rage is something we all have dealt with…Genocide is basically triggered by every day life, every moment she lives is pain, the only emotion she really can feel aside from fury.

We got some sass about her, a lot of hardcore Wonder Woman fans didn’t like her at ALL. Some of it is that the character is portrayed as so mannered, usually, but also some just plain didn’t like her. I remember a lot of people disliked her design, which is sad, because it was mostly my idea. :)

One of the biggest problems with Wonder Woman is, every new writer comes in with what they think is a hot take, THE take that’s going to get her massive acceptance. And sometimes, in our arrogance, we don’t address what came before. Some writers don’t even READ the stories that came before when they take over the book. So every three years or so, it’s a new Diana. The characters don’t carry over. So it’s almost impossible to create new villains for her, because it’s a guarantee the next writers won’t use any of what you’ve built. It’s frustrating and it gets under my skin to this day.

I had a different approach, I wanted to do a run that said, ALL THOSE WONDER WOMAN STORIES HAPPENED. I felt that was a starting point that could help heal the perception that Wonder Woman was a new character every couple years, and would respect the previous stories. People didn’t have to guess what her history was…if there was a story, it happened.

But even that had some land mines. I wanted to use a prominent villainess Greg Rucka created, but when I asked Greg if I could, he was using her elsewhere (perfectly fair, that happens all the time). When I wanted to use Rucka’s version of the gods, DC said no. So the biggest elements of the run I most liked in recent years weren’t available.

It’s difficult, she didn’t really have a champion at DC at that time, she didn’t have an editor or star creator that watched over how she was handled. Everyone likes her, but it helps if a character has someone up high who really gets them and watches out for their portrayals.

I want to stress that DC was actually great to me regarding WW the whole time I was on the book. They knew I would take some risks with her (like giving her a sense of humor) and they backed me on all of that 100%. And they gave me spectacular artists and really great editors. I have zero complaints, except that I wish, like other DC characters, her history was allowed to be part of her character. Starting over and over and over has made it so it’s hard to be a loyal, long-term fan of her in her own book…people love the character and like to jump aboard in stories like anthologies, team books, tv, all that stuff, because they don’t have the feeling that those stories will be erased and forgotten twelve issues from now.

I went on a rant. I love the character, I get the feeling that this is going to be her year, and I know DC is now aware that she has a lot of heat off of that Batman v Superman trailer. They have made a lot of moves with her lately that make me very happy. They want her to be a success and the icon she deserves to be. It will always bug me that, as proud as I am of our run, it didn’t crack that nut for the general audience.

Anyway, Genocide, there are some things I would change…her origin came out a little muddled due to a shift in editorial…she was originally going to have been a New God, but then they weren’t available, and her new origin, I think is pretty cool, but is complex and didn’t really fit the ball of rage she was supposed to be. And it might have been better to just let an artist design her, but I still like her look. Sue me. :)

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Published on January 31, 2016 06:56